


Rogue

by SapphireInTheSky



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Gen, Humor, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 12:59:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7316086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphireInTheSky/pseuds/SapphireInTheSky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone knows that Hawkeye gave The Black Widow a second chance; showed her she wasn't a killing machine, that life had meaning... But what if, one day, she had to return the favour?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rogue

**Author's Note:**

> What started as a mini-fic never stopped. I am hoping to turn this into something big but i don't know how frequent updates will be. I'll see if you guys like this first anyway. *Please note, this will contain strong language and dark scenes throughout.* Happy reading!

**Rogue**

“Don’t you do this to me, Barton. Don’t you dare” Natasha hissed over the coms, legs striding across the rooftop as quick as she could.

“Can’t go back now, Tasha” Clint murmured.

There was a soft click. The pull back of a hammer.

“Barton, I swear if you go through with this-” Natasha leaped across a gap joining two rooftops together, narrowly landing on the other side before she continued onward.

Her lungs were burning, her legs aching, her mind reeling. Emotion bled through her face, clear as day, for once in her life time.

But he couldn’t see it.

“You vill pay vor zhe pain you haf caused me, Barton” a gruff voice echoed over the coms.

Clint didn’t respond.

Whether it was because he wouldn’t or couldn’t was a totally different matter.

“Damn it, Barton, _do_ something!” Natasha urged, cocking her gun midstride.

She was still too far away. And he was alone. Vulnerable. Stupid.

“I’ve done enough, Tasha. This is right” Clint replied, his tone completely neutral.

There was a scuffle of static, then the sound of a fist hitting flesh. Apparently, the antagonist didn’t appreciate being ignored.

Natasha poured on the speed.

She was getting closer to the outdoor shipping compound, could almost imagine them squaring off in the center; Barton offering the inferior position as he lay claim to his guilt.

_Why did she ever leave him alone in the first place!? She knew how he felt about Kozlov, that the guilt would override his logic, force his hand, make him give up._

“Your partner haz finally done zhe right zhing, Romanof” Kozlov growled over a com, crunching it in his fist.

“You vould zhink a man accused of murdering an innozent gurl vould meet hiz own ends” he ranted on, “-Zhat zhe man vould not vait vor zhe gurls fazzer to come and collect zhe life debt…”

Natasha’s lip curled into a snarl as she hopped down from a ledge onto a stack of wooden pallets, then rolled to the floor.

_Kozlov was victimizing her partner. Torturing his already broken mind._

“We both know it was an accident, Kozlov. She wasn’t meant to be standing there” Natasha growled.

Kozlov huffed out a laugh, his bitterness swallowing any remnant of humour.

“It vas a park! Zhat iz vhere little gurls vill be standing!” Kozlov roared.

“She wasn’t supervised!” Natasha roared back, rueing the day they’d pissed off a hitman, “-She walked onto the road! Clint was chasing a target, there was no way he could have stopped in-”

“Tasha”

Natasha stopped at the soft hum of her name.

“Please, just stop” Clint pleaded.

Natasha fired a round into the air, “Screw you, Clint. I’m saving your ass whether you like it or not”

“You vill share zhe pain Barton vonce caused me, Romanof” Kozlov promised, his words echoing a suspicious scratching sound.

Natasha rounded the final corner, dashing out beyond a shipping crate and straight into the white spotlights lighting the gray concrete yard.

There, twenty paces ahead knelt Barton. A gun was leveled at his chest, the large man in question standing only two feet from Clint.

Kozlov’s face was a mix of troubled emotion. His eyes shone with the pain of loss, glistening with tears yet hardened with a lust for bloodshed. They did not stray from Clint, not even to acknowledge the angry, red-haired assassin now on the horizon.

His firm jaw spoke a resolution so firm, it almost seemed set in stone. A tomb stone to be exact. His aim was steady.

Meanwhile, Clint’s shoulders were slumped, his arms hanging limply at his sides. He stared up at his killer, eyes hard but shining. Compromised.

Obviously, as a master assassin, Barton was hardly at Kozlov's mercy…and yet he was willing to let it slide in order to pay back a debt. One he’d never truly earned in the first place as far as she was concerned.

_Manslaughter did not equal human sacrifice. No matter how bad it was. No matter their age or who got mad at who._

_Barton was just being stupid, again._

Natasha leveled her gun at Kozlov, weary of the man’s aim resting on her partner’s heart.

“Shoot him and you’ll die a much more painful death than a bullet can provide” the widow vowed.

Kozlov graced her threat with the slightest of glances, “You are miztaken, Romanof. I came to cause suvvering. Death vould be a release”

Natasha frowned, unsure of the maniacs reasoning. She glanced at Clint, her gun dipping slightly.

It was at this moment that Kozlov chose to play his final card, twisting to aim at Natasha instead of Clint. Without a second of hesitation, the hitman fired; his aim true and deadly.

Clint jolted upright in surprise, finally turning around to witness his partner stumble back and fire off a shot. Kozlov went down with a frosty smile on his face, never to kill again.

Clint scrambled to his feet, almost tripping over himself in his desperation to reach Natasha before she fell.

In only a few strides, he’d caught her upper body in his arms and laid her gently down. She was already fighting to breathe; the hole in her chest the cause of her suffering rather than her instant demise.

“Tasha! No! Tasha!” Clint urged, dragging her body up to his chest using one arm and pressing down on the wound with the other.

Her green eyes flickered to attention, the shock still registering on her face, “Clint?”

“Don’t worry. You’re gonna be okay. Okay?” Clint stammered, feeble reassurances contradicting one another.

“Koz-lov?” Natasha groaned, brow scrunching together as pain entered her reality.

Clint twisted back, firing off a few rounds with her fallen pistol, “Well he’s definitely dead now”

Natasha offered a weak smile, then grimaced as a stab of pain lanced across her chest.

Clint held her closer as if contact would help her situation somehow. Now lying partially in his lap, Clint used his free hand to brush a red strand of hair from her eyes.

Pressing a finger to his ear, Clint quickly fired off the coded alert SHIELD had provided them before the beginning of the mission. It would bring a swarm of agents to their position within ten minutes.

Hopefully, that wouldn’t be too late.

A moment of intense silence passed as Clint forced himself to breathe and Natasha struggled to copy.

“Oh god, I’m so so sorry, Tasha” he whimpered.

_Finally, he had snapped out of it. Now he was living again. Not some obedient, brain dead zombie ready for execution._

She sighed in relief, meeting her partner’s stormy gaze. A pit of guilt lay behind the pale blue glass of his eyes, hurting him more than any bullet could.

“Jackass” she snorted, wincing as he huffed out the barest of laughs.

“I am. I know I am. I’ve always been a jackass, Tasha…and for that, I’m sorry” Clint repeated, concern shooting through the non-existent roof.

The widow didn’t offer a reply this time. She still had to concentrate on breathing, remember?

In lieu of her silence, Clint resumed his guilty train of thought.

“I just got so caught up in what he was saying…and I figured he was right. I mean, she had a right to live more than me, and I ended that. And I know I didn’t mean to but, damn, she was just so young and I should have seen her and-“

He was trembling now, eyes shining over with tears that had remained frozen and unchecked since that fateful day.

Natasha lifted up a wobbly arm, cutting off her partner’s pointless rant by pursing his lips together with a set of red, polished nails.

“Peace” she hushed.

Clint sniffed, blinking away the unshed tears as he coughed off the emotion, “Sorry”

Natasha wheezed a curse, “Stop….apologizing”

“Oh, sorry…” Clint stumbled, eyes widening, “I mean, yes! I will….I mean, I _won’t_ apologize…even though I should…because-“

“CLINT”

“Right, sorry…”

Natasha closed her eyes in surrender. He was a hopeless cause.

Best leave him to Hill and the team of shrinks awaiting them back at base.

A spike of pain shot through the center of her chest all of a sudden, forcing her back into an arch and flustering the archer more than he already was.

“Tasha!? Nat! What’s wrong? Can I help? Answer me!” Clint shook her writhing form, trying to gain her focus through it all. As her movements died down, he began to lose his cool even more.

“Shit…shitshitshitshit” he hissed, pouring over her body as he laid her limp form down, pressing both hands to the wound.

“You wanted serious? Well, here it is! Happy now!?” Clint panted, face contorted in panic and worry.

Leaning down, he pressed an ear to her chest, awaiting a breath that never came.

Reeling upward, Clint addressed her features with a sharp eye. Pale skin, tainted lips, blue, motionless.

Oxygen deprivation.

Maximum time without air, 4 minutes. Brain damage imminent after such time -at least that’s what her profile read.

Shit.

Clint pressed a finger to her carotid artery, praying to any number of god’s that he would find some resistance there.

Nada.

Hands flying back from the chest wound, Clint interlocked his fingers and began compressions. After a few dozens, he dived down, gave her a breath then rose back to complete the next set of heart ministrations.

“Nat!” Clint cried, “Nожалуйста [Please!]”

No response.

Clint continued to demonstrate his knowledge of CPR in the field, his compressions becoming more forceful as time wore on.

_Her lips were fricking blue god damn it._

“Tasha! Come on! I didn’t let you live so you could die on me! You can’t do this to me!” Clint roared, his voice broken and hoarse.

But she remained still.

Over the next few minutes, Clint continued to try. Through the tears and the ache in his bones, through the emotional toil and the physical sickness, through the loss of a comrade.

Eventually, the archer stopped. Sat back. Witnessed the suffering Kozlov had intended.

Scraping the gun up from the floor, Clint clumsily rose to his feet and wavered over to the dead man’s corpse.

He still had that stupid fucking smirk on his god damn righteous face.

An abrupt wave of absolute fury suddenly washed over Clint, forcing his finger onto the trigger and half a dozen rounds into the dead man’s smiling face.

He was no longer recognizable. The smile was gone.

So was hers.

And it was all his fault.

A low thrum of boots on concrete suddenly met the assassins’ keen ears, the rappel of combat gear sliding roughly across rope as each man descended from a hover jet. The ‘chink’ of AK 47’s and other such weaponry strung together into one final din.

It was the voice of a strong female that finally forced Clint’s attention away from the bloody watermelon at his feet.

“Barton!”

It was Hill. She had arrived.

“You’re late” Clint whispered, back still turned to her.

Her next response was delayed and seemed to hold a measure of caution to it.

“Lower your gun agent Barton” Hill ordered.

But he ignored the command, choosing instead to twist on the spot and face the demonic sea of militant agents bedecked in black. A few were huddled around Natasha, seeming frantic in their movements.

Clint no longer shared their desperation. In fact, he didn’t feel much of anything any more. Hill’s expression said she knew as much.

“What happened here?” Hill attempted, choosing a new tactic.

“What’s it look like?” Clint shot back icily.

_He knew he had no right to treat Hill like this. She wasn’t responsible, he was. Then again, fuck it, this was the worst day in his entire existence, he was allowed to be an asshole._

Hill pursed her lips, clearly frustrated by his demeanor. That didn’t mean she wasn’t sympathetic to his plight, her distance had proven that. She could have easily had him tranq’d, detained and analyzed by now, but she was giving him a chance.

Good old Hill…

Too bad he didn’t care any more.

“I’m going to assume that is Kozlov by your feet?” Hill side tracked.

“Oh really? I can’t tell any more” he shrugged sarcastically.

Hill cast her eyes to her feet, clearly calculating the best way to draw in the broken soldier without getting shot.

“Was he the one who shot Romanof?”

Clint’s right eye twitched ever so slightly, the comment having struck a nerve. He didn’t bother to reply. Hill could interpret his silence however she wanted.

“Do I need to give you an escort or are you going to come willingly?” Hill proposed.

Cocking his head to the side, Clint eyed the swarm of agents. He could pick out a few level sevens, the only real challenge to his level nine. The rest were all five and below.

A crucial mistake on their part…

“Nah, I’m good. Gonna hit up a diner a few blocks back. I heard they serve a mean lobster that I’m dying to try” Clint stated casually.

He could feel the electric growing in the air. The increasing number of eyes heading in his direction, at his eyes, his gun.

They were beginning to think he was responsible for all of this.

They weren’t exactly wrong.

_Oh well…You win some you lose some._

“We can’t let you do that, Barton” Hill noted, “Don’t play this game with me”

Clint cracked his neck from side to side, “What game? A man should be able to eat in privacy. I think I’ve earned _that_ much, don’t you agree, Hill?”

The intelligence officer seemed clearly torn by his response. As a friend, colleague and a superior, it was always hard to make these decisions.

“Please, Clint. I don’t want to do anything I’m going to regret” Hill concluded, eyes warm with honest friendship.

“Then don’t” Clint finished, turning his back on the squad and strolling to the exit of the compound.

“Clint!” Hill called.

Clint kept on walking, gun still in hand. He reckoned he could thumb in at least a few rounds before arrows were needed.

“Agent Barton!” Hill tried once more.

Clint didn’t stop.

With a sigh, Hill silenced her attempts. A few agents implored her gaze, seeking the command to run the rogue agent down.

But she ignored them.

“Let’s deal with this situation first, boys” Hill announced to the group, turning back to Natasha.

As she pushed her way through the huddle of medics, a cold grip of dread began to nestle deep in her gut. No wonder Clint had withdrawn.

His partner was-

“Don’t worry, boss. It was tough going but we’ve managed to stabilize Romanof… for the time being. I reckon her partner held her off from the brink long enough” a level four medic announced.

The relief that washed over Hill was indescribable, to say the least. The list of problems accompanying _that_ kind of situation was enough to play hell with SHIELD for a few months -especially where Clint was concerned.

Hill’s eyes widened.

Clint must still think-

“Quick! Stan, Lee-” Hill pointed at two level seven agents, “-Chase down Barton and tell him Romanof is alive. He probably won’t believe you, so do all you can to convince him. Call for backup if necessary”

The agents instantly set off at a run.

Standing back to her full height, Hill accompanied the loading team of medics back into the landed hover jet, monitoring Romanof’s vitals as if they were her own mother’s.

There would be no more deaths today if she could help it.

Hill only hoped Barton felt the same way.


End file.
